Sunday, 3 January 2016

5 Top Sins to Avoid in Mobile Testing

Nowadays, the
user experience delivered by a mobile app determines its popularity and
profitability. While testing a mobile app, the testers need to identify and
eliminate all bugs that affect the application’s user interface (UI) and user
experience (UX). But testers have to identify and eliminate all defects in a
mobile app within a shorter amount of time. That is why; it becomes essential
for QA professionals to avoid a number of common but critical mobile app
testing mistakes.

5 Mobile App
Testing Mistakes Each Tester Must Avoid

1) Not Focusing on Mobile Experience

Many reports
have highlighted that most users download mobile apps based on their looks
rather than functionality. So the testers must focus on testing the app’s user
interface (UI) thoroughly and repeatedly. It is also important for testers to
allocate more testing time to UI than other functionality. They must evaluate
the UI thoroughly to ensure that the mobile app looks plain and simple, while
allowing users to find information or perform an action in a quicker and more
convenient way. They can even check if the UI design can save users’ time by
providing special features like one-click facility, automatic spelling checks,
and infinite scrolling.

2) Ignoring Factors Affecting Cross Browser Compatibility

Each mobile app
must deliver quality experience across many devices and browsers to keep the
users engaged. But testers often fail to identify the factors that affect the
cross browser compatibility of the application. While testing a mobile website,
the professionals must try to find out the reason behind such UX bugs. Often
the cross browser compatibility of a mobile app is affected due to use of
specific scripting language, or add-ons or plug-ins. Likewise, the document
object model (DOM) of the application may prevent it from performing seamlessly
across many browsers. The testers can always use specialized tool to assess the
app’s cross-browser compatibility more efficiently.

3) Not Assessing Quality of Links

The quality of
links will have a huge impact on the user experience of mobile web apps. But
testers often forget to assess the quality of links while testing a mobile website. They must remember that there are a number of factors that can make a
hyperlink outdated or broken. For instance, changes made to the website’s
structure or external resources, any document or old web pages removed from the
site, or any changes made to a URL can cause broken links. So the testers must
identify the broken or outdated links, and report them along with the root
cause. They can even consider using a variety of tools to identify the broken
or outdated links more efficiently.

4) Inadequate Usability Testing

Nowadays, each
app must deliver richer user experience to become profitable in the longer run.
But often testers fail to perform adequate usability testing due to constraints
related to time and resources. The inadequate usability testing can have a huge
impact on the application’s user experience, hence its popularity and
profitability. That is why; the mobile app testing strategy must focus
extensively on usability testing. The testers can further use a variety of
tools to identify and eliminate the bugs affecting the application’s user
experience. Likewise, they must help developers to fix the UX bugs effectively
by providing detailed and specific information about the defects.

5) Not Mixing Real Devices and Emulators Properly

The emulators
make it easier for testers to assess the mobile app’s functionality and
performance across a variety of devices without investing in many real devices.
But the emulators cannot provide adequate information about how the app
performs on a specific device or a particular carrier network. So the testers
still need real devices to gather more relevant information about the
application’s quality, performance and user experience. However, it is always
important for the testers to maintain a proper balance between real devices and
emulators in the testing environment. They can always consider combining the
emulators with a load testing tool to assess how the application performs under
various loads.

The testers must
remember that various mobile apps cannot be tested by implementing a single
testing strategy. It is always important for them to make and implement custom
test plans according to the type, usage and functionality of the mobile app.
The custom mobile app testing strategy will help them to avoid a number of
fatal mistakes.